The day after my bout with what I suspect was food poisoning, my breakfast and lunch consisted of two hardboiled eggs, a bowl of chicken stock, and a bottle of ginger beer. So, when dinner rolled around, my appetite was back. And good thing too since we had reservations at Raw Canvas, a unique, art-themed restaurant in Vancouver’s Yaletown. Akemi had been eager to check the place out since seeing it featured on Food Network.
The menu consists of charcuterie items (meats, cheeses, nuts and dried fruit) but the big draw isn’t the food, it’s, well, the draw. Or the painting to be more precise. You take a seat at your table, have your meal, then pick your canvas (priced by size) and head on over to the painting area where you can give free rein to your artistic expressions.
We sat down at the table and I ordered some terrine, sausage, cheese, dried figs, and mustard. Akemi wasn’t hungry. Food was the farthest thing from her mind. Sensing her eagerness, the waitress suggested we could head down and start painting. She would bring us our food when it was ready. Well, that’s all Akemi needed to hear. She was off! I grabbed our bottle of San Pellegrino and tried to keep up.
Down in what I’ll refer to as “the painting pit”, we selected our canvases after which our waitress ran us through everything we needed to know: paintbrushes here, paint there, water around here… Akemi was practically jumping up and down in place. “Looking forward to this?”asked our waitress. “Some more than others,”I conceded.”
Our evening of pictures in pictures…
We were instructed to leave the paintings there to dry, and then return within the week to pick them up. I imagined that, in that time, my masterpiece would catch someone’s eye – perhaps a famous art critic who frequents Raw Canvas. He’ll take one look at my piece, declare it genius, and kickstart my new career! Or, someone will steal it and sell it for tens of thousands of dollars! For her part, Akemi simply said: “You’re a great writer but when it comes to art…”.
I suspect she’s jealous.
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